1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a personal cleansing article and more specifically to a personal cleansing article wherein an assembly of one or more of skin cleansing, aesthetic, and skin benefit toilet bars are contained within the confines of a porous pouch.
2. The Related Art
Toilet bar skin cleaning properties are well known. An ideal bar composition not only cleans but provides a large quantity of lather and leaves the skin feeling comfortable. Consumers also desire to obtain toilet bars with good hardness, low mush, and that contain appealing aesthetic ingredients such as fragrances, optionally one or more other aesthetic ingredients and one or more skin benefit agents such as emollients for moisturizing and treating the skin according to individual preferences and needs. To accomplish this, a wide variety of additives have been suggested for inclusion in toilet bars. Some additives enhance the physical properties of the bar such as lather volume, hardness and wear rate. Other additives effect the aesthetic and sensory properties of the bar. Still other additives enhance skin moisturization, residual antibacterial properties, and treat skin conditions such as acne, etc. Unfortunately not all potentially desirable additives may be compatible with each other. As a result, a single toilet bar product is not suitable or desirable for every consumer. At the same time, the bar manufacturer desires to reduce costs by minimizing the difference in toilet bar compositions it produces.
The use of a porous or netted bag or pouch to carry soap is known. The prior art includes U.S. Pat. No. 1,682,119 where a bag is provided with soap in a flake or fragment form. Similarly U.S. Pat. No. 2,607,940 discloses a mesh bag so that a soap can be easily inserted. Similar arrangements are taught in e.g. U.S. Pat. No. 3,167,805, U.S. Pat. No. 4,190,550, U.S. Pat. No. 4,228,834, U.S. Pat. No. 4,48,0939, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,462,378. U.S. Pat. No. 4,789,262 teaches a soap holding cleaning pad. U.S. Pat. No. 5,839,842 discloses a cleansing system with a toilet bar and a sponge in a porous pouch. U.S. Pat. No. 6,042,288 teaches the use of a synthetic detergent bar and a pouf for holding the bar. JP Patent No. 10137152 also teaches a solid soap in an expansible net. The problem with prior art toilet bar and pouch implements is the inability to make available a product with a wide range of sensory properties in a convenient format but with excellent physical properties.
Surprisingly it has been found that when a single toilet bar is formulated with high levels of benefit agents such as a moisturizing agent, and aesthetic ingredients such as a fragrance, the wear rate and lather volume properties of the toilet bar such as lather, wear rate etc. are substantially degraded compared to a system of individual toilet bars formulated separately where a cleansing bar, a benefit agent bar, and an aesthetic agent bar are separately produced. For the purposes of this invention, a “bar” is herein defined as an individual toilet bar or other geometrically or amorphous shaped body that may be selected from and combined with other toilet bars or bodies according to the invention. According to the present invention, these separate bars may be combined in a porous pouch to bring together all the cleansing and skin treatment attributes desired by the consumer and at the same time form a useful cleansing implement with superior lathering properties compared to a single toilet bar formed with the same cleansing and skin treatment ingredients. Furthermore it has been found that production efficiency is enhanced by making the bars separately since such bars if made by the melt cast process have a shorter solidification time. Moreover the variability of solidification time in melt cast bars may be minimized by separate manufacturing of the bars. With respect to extrusion of such bars, the variability of processing parameters such as extrusion rate and stampability may also be minimized by separate manufacture of the bars.